Outlier
by chirinah.18
Summary: They all grew up together, the whole lot of them. But whereas Sasuke, Naruto and Hinata live in the same world, Sakura is an outlier. Someone who desperately wants to hang on, but keeps finding reasons to let go. One shot. Sasusaku, kind of. Er, not really.


Outlier

A Naruto fanfiction. Sakura-centric. Modern World AU.

In which she's a planet in the same solar system, but just barely. A Pluto, basically.

Premise: They all grew up together, the whole lot of them. But whereas Sasuke, Naruto and Hinata live in the same world, Sakura is an outlier. Someone who desperately wants to hang on, but keeps finding reasons to let go.

.

And there she goes again. Crying over Uchiha's shoulder like an abused Cinderella, their dark heads hunched together in a picturesque scene. Best friends. Could-be lovers, if only the girl wasn't so stupidly in love with someone else. And if only the boy could stop wallowing in the misery on unrequited love and started making a move.

But alas, the pair of them was only best friends. So close to each other it was obscene.

Sakura Haruno wanted to scoff, but schooled an expression of compassionate sympathy instead. She ignored the constant pangs inside her chest and stayed in character. She was Hinata Hyuuga's friend, after all. Even though she kind of hated her at the same time.

"Now, now, Hinata-chan. I'm sure it was just a friend. Or a cousin. You know how friendly Naruto is. And he's, like, related to half the country so, I'm sure it was no one important." And there was the reason she couldn't hate the beautiful girl completely. She loved Naruto wholeheartedly.

Now if only Naruto could take a hint and stop being such a whore, then maybe the person Sakura liked could stop pining over the little princess and start moving on. With Sakura, preferably.

Sasuke whispered soothingly into Hinata's ear while rubbing her back as if to mock Sakura's thoughts.

Sakura inwardly rolled her eyes. 'Of course, what was she thinking? As if that would ever happen.'

.

The Sakura-Sasuke-Hinata-Naruto relationship dynamic didn't start out as complicated as it was now. In the beginning they were just four kids who didn't fit in the sandbox with the rest of the kids and started hanging out together with the urgings of Naruto who wouldn't shut up unless you indulged his whims. He could talk the ear off a sleeping panda, he was loud. He and Sasuke would argue about everything, with the two girls picking sides. Hinata picked Naruto more often than Sasuke. Sakura always picked Sasuke. Not that he noticed.

As they grew up, not many things changed. They still hang out together more often than not. The two boys still fought about the most ridiculous things. And Sakura and Hinata just watched them, cheering over their respective crushes.

Everyone expected them to pair up, sooner it later. Especially as puberty kicked in and blessed Hinata with tits and hips and Sakura with...more knowledge, she supposed. Sasuke zeroed in on the tits and started panting over the dark-haired, stuttering princess, while Naruto took to stupidly flirting with just about everybody. He didn't discriminate by gender either. Hinata blushed much more heavily around the loud boy and soon developed an affliction which made her faint when Naruto was within a three-meter radius. Sakura on the one hand tried basically everything to make Sasuke notice her romantically: from trying her hand on make up, which gave her a horrible acne break out, to attempting to make him jealous which ended with her being groped inside a movie theater and going to jail for assaulting the dude. She even tried making him fall in love with her by wowing him with her brain prowess, which just made him hate her because she beat him on the rankings and his family didn't like it. Nothing worked, basically, and so the two girls spent many years pining over two idiots who were about as oblivious as a pair of rocks.

At least Hinata was treated well by both. Naruto flirted with her in the most ridiculous ways and Sasuke just treated her with disdain.

Now they were months away from graduation and Naruto was sighted with yet another unfamiliar girl and Hinata was crying, Sasuke was trying to cheer her up by offering to beat Naruto up, and Sakura was being incredibly useless in all counts.

Sometimes Sakura wished she never met any of them.

.

Sasuke Uchiha. Naruto Uzumaki. Hinata Hyuuga. Sakura Haruno.

The four of them were a package deal, supposedly. Where one was, the other three must surely be there as well. That wasn't true all the time, but it was often enough that people believed this to be a cardinal rule. Though, many times people just see the first three and forget there was supposed to be a pink in between the blacks and blues and yellows somewhere.

Sakura Haruno. She wasn't really anything special. Not like Naruto, who was son if the President. Not like Sasuke, who was son of one of the wealthiest men in the world and brother to the famous vocalist of the world-renowned band Akatsuki. Not like Hinata who came from the line of old kings and was practically a princess. Sakura was just Sakura. A smart girl with an abnormally large forehead whose only claim to fame was an odd quirk of genetics that gave her pink hair that were prone to frizz and split ends she had to cut once a month otherwise she'd go bald. She wasn't rich or famous or pretty. She wished she was, but that's something she didn't count on happening anytime soon. Or ever, really. She was pretty much resigned to her lot in life.

Friend of the rich, the famous and the pretty. In an unrequited love with Sasuke Uchiha.

Sakura Haruno.

.

They were inside Sasuke's car. It was just the two of them, but no one would have assumed there was anything romantic between them. Not with the tense atmosphere surrounding them.

Sakura sometimes thought the Uchiha hated her. They never really talked. They have known each other for more than a decade, but Sakura didn't remember there ever being an instance where she and he talked about anything with just the two of them. They talked in school about schoolwork. They talked in the hallways when he would come looking for Hinata. They talked when in a party, and complain that Naruto was acting like the idiot he was. They talked when Hinata was around, initiating innocent, proper conversation between friends. They talked when they gathered at Naruto's for game nights and movie nights and party nights. They talked when Naruto made them talk. They didn't talk when they were stuck inside a moving car with just the two of them.

So Sakura kept quiet.

Sasuke focused in the road, making sure to turn right at the Hashirama Diversion to take Sakura back to her small, two-story house. He stopped right outside the gate, the car geared to turn back to the highway the moment she stepped out.

She stepped out, gave a small wave that went unnoticed because he was already gunning it back to where they came.

Sakura knew where he was going.

.

Sakura thought about confessing many times, even tried to do it once or twice. Or thrice. The first time was when they were twelve, and she was under the impression that they were soul mates because he defended her from a bully who insulted her forehead.

That very day she asked him to meet her at the Sakura tree behind the pool right after school. She asked her friend, Ino, for help and the girl was very encouraging and even applied make up on her young face that made her look like someone slapped her repeatedly. She took the sloppy letter she was hiding inside her bag just waiting for the right moment and stood under the tree and waited.

And waited.

Her parents nearly got the police involved when she didn't come home on time, and found her crying mascara tears on the foot of a wilting Sakura with a crumpled letter in her hands.

The next she was sick, and Hinata, Naruto and Sasuke. She told them she got rained on that's why she had a fever, and not because she was out in the cold for hours waiting for a certain someone. The certain someone didn't tell them either.

And that was that.

Life moved on.

The next time she tried to confess it was more subdued. She left a letter inside his locker. This one was better written, grammar and content-wise. Or so she thought. But when he next saw her he gave the letter back with red marks pointing out her improper verb usage and lacking vocabulary. They were fourteen. She was in drama club for a year before that, which saved her pride when she responded with a polite thank you for his 'help'.

It was a good thing she forgot to put his name on it.

The next few years she devoted to studying. And maybe just a little bit of pining. Occasionally, Naruto would flirt with her. Often it was received with violent reactions. Naruto never learned, though. He just kept at it. Sakura thought he might have made a sport at it, and people noticed and started to pair them together. Which was just wrong, in Sakura's opinion. In her mind Naruto was like her idiotic, possibly mentally retarded younger brother. She couldn't imagine having a romantic relationship with him.

Apparently though, not everyone agreed.

Sasuke, for one, was completely of the opinion that they belonged together. Although since he liked Hinata and Hinata liked Naruto and he wanted Hinata to be happy, he asked her subtly if she could possibly give up Naruto for Hinata.

Like Naruto was same sort of price.

Sakura said, "Sure," and smiled.

Sasuke gave her a stiff nod.

The next time the blond idiot flirted with her, she punched the daylights out of him. It could be her imagination, but she liked to think Sasuke gave her an approving smile for that.

,

Sakura had a lot of pent up tension. Because not many people see her, and she didn't have a lot of friends to confide in that weren't the source of her stress, she had to find some other way to get release. And so, she turned to boxing.

It was her friend, Tenten's suggestion. The girl worked in a gym her uncle owned and referred Sakura to fitness instructor because she noticed she was running herself ragged taking up too much schoolwork to avoid her life. Ino had been horrified when she learned about it, but came to agree when she saw how much lighter Sakura's mood had been since joining.

The pink-haired girl came to punch sandbags once a week, and it hurt physically, but the adrenaline it gave was a high she slowly became addicted to. She craved the burn, nowadays. When she was around her friends, her heart stung like hell, but when she was boxing the sting was in other parts of her body. She preferred that.

.

The third time she confessed it was when she was drunk. Naruto was there, and so was half of the student body. The location was Ino's house, because it was Halloween and Ino wouldn't miss an excuse to party. Also, her parents were in a vacation somewhere in China which left the house at her mercy.

Just like any typical teenage party, people wanted to gossip and learn the dirt about many people. So naturally, they ended up playing truth or dare. To encourage people to pick truth, Ino came up with the most ridiculous dares there was.

Sakura was drunk. She never could handle her liquor, and Ino had been piling her up with drink after drink from the moment she tripped inside the room in her borrowed silver heels. So when the bottle picked her, she of course picked dare.

The dare was to kiss the person she liked. Luckily, that person was just to her right.

But this wouldn't be Sakura if she wasn't unfortunate in some way, so of course she ended up puking. Right on his face.

Suffice it to say it was mortifying. Especially since the boy could hold a grudge. For months afterward she was heavily ignored by the Uchiha, and if they were ever forced to interact he would glare at her so sharply she felt like there were knives cutting up her skin when he looked at her. Nothing she did pleased him. Not even when she gave him a basket of fresh tomatoes. It was only when Hinata scolded him that he stopped being silently antagonistic and started being his usual cold, standoffish self.

Sakura wasn't really happy with that either. But what could she do?

.

Graduation came and went, and Sakura thought of confessing again. At this point it was just a pain, really, holding on to feelings that would never be returned. She was years away from being a doctor, and she felt she didn't need the distraction in her life.

And that was all Sasuke was, really. A very, very painful distraction.

So the night of the graduation party, she roamed the halls of Ino's house—wearing her own flats this time—pissed off her face drunk. Her head rung with words she couldn't say, and pictures of a future that will never happen.

She wanted them out of her head.

She stumbled inside a room with no lights on. She heard panting voices, deep, laboring breaths that sounded obscenely familiar.

If she was sober, she would have hightailed it out of there but she was drunk so she did what only Drunk Sakura would do.

She groped the wall for the light and switched it on.

Then she screamed.

.

In hindsight, that was very idiotic of her. Very few people heard her scream through the pumping music, but there was enough of them that the scene would forever be carved in their history.

Naruto and Hinata, sitting on a bed. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

N-A-K-E-D.

.

Sasuke was furious. He and Naruto got into a fight, but Sakura wasn't there to see that. No, she was on the plane then, on the way to a future about as bleak as the Middle Ages.

A few days later she heard from Ino that Naruto and Hinata were dating, and that Sasuke went to jail for a DUI when he found out.

Sakura laughed.

Idiots, the lot of them.

.

Years passed. Sakura became a doctor, Naruto went on and became a politician obsessed with ramen, Hinata became his wife who smiled beside him in photos, Sasuke…well, Sakura didn't know.

He went off grid after graduation, after that fiasco with Naruto and Hinata and Sakura was too far away to care about him ( _lies, lies, lies)_ so she didn't really know what happened to him. He could be dead for all she knew.

He could be dead and she wouldn't care.

.

Sakura believed she was over him. She dated four guys while she was an undergrad, and she dated one person on and off through med school. None of them looked, talked or walked anywhere like Sasuke. They all looked at her like she hung the moon in the sky and listened to her whenever she rambled about medical stuff without sneering. They made her coffee when she needed to pull all-nighters for her grueling classes. They gave her rides everywhere. They smiled at her, and loved her, and treated her like the princess she never was.

They were great.

.

"Let's break up," the fifth guy said. "I can't do this anymore."

Sakura blew cold air through her mouth and began to say something. But what could she say? Why are you doing this? What did I do wrong? Do you not love me anymore?

She knew all the answers to that. And he knew too.

"I thought I could be patient," he was saying. "I thought if I just waited, you'd learn to love me. But you'll never love anyone, Sakura Haruno. If four years didn't make you open up your heart, I don't think four more could.

"So let's just stop this."

.

Sakura cried over him, like she always did every time one broke up with her. But she was really crying over the fact that she was left behind more than the fact that _he_ left, you know?

She wasn't heartbroken or anything.

She never was.

Only one person was capable of doing that.

Over him? Stop kidding. She was never going to get over him.

.

Sakura came back to Konoha for Naruto and Hinata's first child's birthday. She was made his godmother at birth, but she's never met her before that day. She never wanted to. At 28 and a pediatrician, she was quite fond of kids, but she didn't fancy having a child of her own.

She loved her work, and her work loved her and that was enough for her.

.

He was there as well, wearing a navy blue suit much too sinful for its own good. His hair was longer, and fell to cover half of his face, no longer sticking up at the back like it used to. But his eyes were the same penetrating black it always was, and as always it seemed to have this uncanny ability to bypass her.

He never once looked at her.

She looked away and smiled at Kiba. She didn't care. She didn't care.

.

"You've changed," he said after about a gallon of beer.

She was completely sober, but she felt like she was drunk. Drunk off his attention. He was looking at her like he never looked at her before, like he was _actually_ seeing her for once. He looked at her like he was confused where she came from, how could he possibly miss her?

And how could he, really? She had pink hair, for god's sake!

He lifted his hand to cup her cheek and stared into her eyes like she was a puzzle he couldn't figure out.

She bit her tongue so she wouldn't cry.

"Let's get you to bed, Sasuke. You're drunk."

.

She came to study under Tsunade in Konoha General Hospital. She enjoyed her work, but nothing else. She spent eighteen hours a day in the hospital, and anyone could see she was overworking herself, even Sakura herself.

But she couldn't stop. She just couldn't.

Otherwise she'd keep seeing his face as he looked at her in a semblance of awe, like she wasn't Sakura and he _wasn't_ Sasuke.

She was Sakura. She was always Sakura.

.

On her 29th birthday, he came to her house after everyone's gone. He had a bouquet of flowers in his hand, yellow roses for forgiveness. His face was as impassive as ever, but his eyes were earnestly looking through hers, as if he was saying, _"I see you now. I'm sorry I didn't try before."_

She bit her lower lip so hard she tasted blood, wishing time would flow back and take her to that period where she would have appreciated such gestures.

As it is, she simply slammed the door in his face.

.

Sasuke was in pursuit.

Sakura honestly couldn't understand why. He didn't try to talk to her, but he was always around with coffee and flowers and lunch and dinner and notes that made her day. She felt vindictive every time she told him off, or every time she threw the flowers in the trash (then retrieved them right after because she couldn't stand the thought of them withering with the garbage). She hated the smirk he had whenever she tried to tell him she could walk home on her own but then directly faints in exhaustion.

She was overworking herself and he noticed (which made her heart so full she felt like she was dying) and tried to help.

He never told her what to do. He never actually told her much. The extent of their conversations always seemed to be him greeting her using her name (without suffixes) then her berating him for his tactics that day. Then he would just stand there listening with a smile that was half-guilty, half-amused.

He annoyed her.

Dear, God.

She _hated_ him so much.

.

Lies.

Sakura lay in bed with tears dripping down her emerald green eyes, feeling stupid.

She wanted to whack herself in the head.

 _"I'm sorry. I love you."_

How could she have fallen for him again?

.

"Do you want to give him a chance?" asked Ino.

"..."

She did.

She hated it, but she did.

"Do you think he can really see me this time?"

Ino shrugged. "Who knows? It's hard to imagine a Sasuke not totally hung up on Hinata." _Like it's hard to imagine a Sakura not completely in love with a Sasuke Uchiha._ "But it's been years. He must have moved on, yeah?"

But Sakura was unable to move on, so how could she expect him to?

.

"We're similar kinds of people, Sasuke. We love far too much. What makes you think you don't still love her?"

"It's been ten years."

Sakura laughed.

The sound grated her ears.

.

She packed her bags and flew on the earliest flight to the other side of the country on the pretext of a medical seminar. She took all her valuables, her favorite clothes. She took everything she couldn't bear to live without.

She didn't take Sasuke.

.

But Sasuke came anyway.

"You think I'll give up on you?" he challenged. "I've spent half my life in love with the wrong girl, while completely ignoring the person made for me. I'm not going to spend the rest regretting that I realized my feelings and didn't pursue them."

"How about my feelings, then? I spent half my life loving the wrong person, too, Sasuke. I'm not, I'm not…"

"I'll give you time to think. But don't you think five failed relationships are enough to tell you you'll never love anyone but me?"

.

She wanted to kill him she really did.

She couldn't even say what she felt for him anymore. She wanted to see him all the time. She wanted his smiles, his attention. She wanted to kiss him, make love to him, marry him. She wanted to bear his children despite the fact that she barely had the time to take care of herself, much less another needy human being.

She wanted his words. She wanted to open her eyes in the morning and see his face first thing. She wanted to laugh with him, love with him.

She also wanted to throw him in front of a moving vehicle and watch his innards splatter across the concrete.

She wanted to see him bleed.

She wanted his tears, she wanted him prone at her feet, like an offering simply for her.

She wanted his whole life, his soul at her mercy.

She wanted to make him happy, but she wanted to make him suffer too.

.

"I don't think this will work," she said, sprawled on the bed with only the thin sheet covering her body. She stared at her masterpiece dripping reds across his sculpted back, feeling pained simply because he's in pain.

"We're completely wrong for each other," she added.

And they were. Sakura spent every second imagining ways to hurt him, then feeling guilty about it. Sasuke juggled his time between managing his company and being at her beck and call. They spent twenty hours a day together, because even at the hospital, he wouldn't leave her alone.

"We're—"

"We're completely wrong for this world, Sakura, but we're not wrong for each other."

.

 _"You're the only one for me."_

.

Why did it have to take him so long to realize that?

.

"I can't forgive you."

"It's okay. I don't need your forgiveness."

"Then what do you need from me?"

"Just you is enough."

.

"Will you die for me?"

"No…I'll die _with_ you." He faced her with a dark smile. "You think I'll let you go?"

"Then…"


End file.
